A quarter of an hour later the citadine stopped at the foot of the steps going up to the Chamber of Deputies, at that end of the Pont de la Concorde which leads to discord.
“I thought the Chamber unapproachable?” said the provincial, surprised to find himself in the great lobby.
“That depends,” replied Bixiou; “materially speaking, it costs thirty sous for a citadine to approach it; politically, you have to spend rather more. The swallows thought, so a poet says, that the Arc de Triomphe was erected for them; we artists think that this public building was built for us,—to compensate for the stupidities of the Theatre-Francais and make us laugh; but the comedians on this stage are much more expensive; and they don’t give us every day the value of our money.”
“So this is the Chamber!” cried Gazonal, as he paced the great hall in which there were then about a dozen persons, and looked around him with an air which Bixiou noted down in his memory and reproduced in one of the famous caricatures with which he rivalled Gavarni.
Leon went to speak to one of the ushers who go and come continually between this hall and the hall of sessions, with which it communicates by a passage in which are stationed the stenographers of the “Moniteur” and persons attached to the Chamber.
“As for the minister,” replied the usher to Leon as Gazonal approached them, “he is there, but I don’t know if Monsieur Giraud has come. I’ll see.”
As the usher opened one side of the double door through which none but deputies, ministers, or messengers from the king are allowed to pass, Gazonal saw a man come out who seemed still young, although he was really forty-eight years old, and to whom the usher evidently indicated Leon de Lora.
“Ha! you here!” he exclaimed, shaking hands with both Bixiou and Lora. “Scamps! what are you doing in the sanctuary of the laws?”
“Parbleu! we’ve come to learn how to blague,” said Bixiou. “We might get rusty if we didn’t.”
“Let us go into the garden,” said the young man, not observing that Gazonal belonged to the party.